1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a candidate selection apparatus and a candidate selection method utilizing voice recognition, and is particularly suitable for use in a candidate selection apparatus that enables selection of a target candidate by performing voice recognition of either the target candidate or a candidate number assigned to the target candidate, spoken by a user from among target candidates and candidate numbers that are displayed in list form.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most vehicles are equipped with various electronic devices, such as an audio device, an air conditioner, and a navigation device. Hitherto, in order to avoid, for example, driving with one hand on the wheel when operating these electronic devices, there has been provided a system in which an electronic device is operated by using voice recognition.
A voice recognition system typically recognizes, as a speech command, a specific word or phrase, a simple statement, or the like that has been spoken by a user, and supplies a recognition result of the speech command to an application of an electronic device. In response to this, the application performs control corresponding to the recognition result. For example, when an address search for a destination is made as an application of a navigation device, an address identified by using voice recognition is input to the navigation device, and then the address is able to be set as a search key for a facility.
Hitherto, there has been provided a technique in which, as illustrated in FIG. 8, when a user sets an address or the like by using voice recognition, a candidate number is assigned to each of a plurality of candidates displayed in list form as targets for voice recognition, the user says a candidate number, and thus a target candidate corresponding to the candidate number may be selected (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-250587). Also, there has been provided a technique in which a target candidate may be selected by saying the name or the like of the target candidate directly in addition to saying a candidate number. For example, in the example in FIG. 8, in the case where the user wants to select “Florida”, when the user says the sixth candidate number “six” or the name of the target candidate “Florida”, “Florida” may be selected.
However, as illustrated in FIG. 9, for example, in the case where candidate numbers are assigned to target candidates which are numerals, such as street numbers (or house numbers) of addresses in the United States, because candidate numbers in ascending order are sequentially assigned to a plurality of target candidates displayed in list form from the top, some candidate numbers do not coincide with numerals of street numbers (target candidates).
In this case, there is a problem in that, in such a voice recognition system, it is not able to be determined whether a numeral said by the user is a candidate number or a street number (target candidate) and false recognition occurs. For example, in the example in FIG. 9, when the user says “five”, the voice recognition system is not able to determine whether the “five” refers to “7” displayed in a fifth item in a list or “5” displayed in a fourth item in the list.
The present invention has been accomplished in order to solve such a problem. In a system that enables selection of a target candidate by saying either the target candidate or a candidate number assigned to the target candidate, displayed in a list, an object of embodiments of the present invention is to enable voice recognition of a target candidate to be selected by a user to be correctly performed at all times in the case where character strings representing numerals are displayed as target candidates in list form.